Blue Goose ~ Day 183

November 26, 2014 ~ Ridgecrest, CA to Palm Desert, CA

I lingered at the Starbucks in Ridgecrest until full light and then went in search of a Bell’s Sparrow. This bird, until earlier this year was considered the same species as what is now named the Sagebrush Sparrow. Both of them are listed as a Sage Sparrow in any field guide published before this year; it's called a split and is the opposite of a lump. 

I had checked eBird and found a bunch of birds reported from Cerro Coso Community College so that’s where I headed, up a long rise south of town. These venues are always more complex than I think they will be. Like I expect to go and the reported birds will be there to greet me. Of course this never happens, but often my instincts are good. Today, I drove through the campus, kept going south on a dusty rocky gravelly road little ways and then turned east. I wasn’t far from the buildings but was definitely out in habitat (desert scrub) on a 5-10 mph road.

Bell's Sparrow area - south of Ridgecrest, CA

And almost immediately I saw a small group of Bell’s! They flew back and forth across the road, stopping to perch on a small shrubs, moved on, but generally stayed in the vicinity. I watched for 30 minutes and then drove through the campus proper, constantly thinking about what it must be like to live and work in this dry land. Already, here in late November in mid morning, it was warm…nice for this time of year but surely brutal in the summer. Still, the early mornings and evenings and nights are filled with sky-beauty. I don’t know the elevation here; perhaps it cools off at night as it does in the desert. The areas around buildings is xeriscaped. There is very little of what we consider lawn grass.

As I drove south, I passed through some weird settlements - collections of sun-baked buildings / trailers/ shacks held together in any way possible with any available scraps, sometimes with a vehicle or two and a yard of castoffs. Derelict, poverty, outlaw, dysfunctional free spirit....hard to tell who lives in these places. I couldn't always tell if they were deserted or inhabited. There were also often single trailers settled in the middle of the desert, down dusty rutted roads. The main route through all of this, however, was very busy, with big RVs heading north…probably for the long Thanksgiving weekend. 

At Barstow, I went south through more desert / trailer / off-road vehicle land until I came to the mountains where I turned east toward Twentynine Palms, the huge Marine base, and Joshua Tree National Monument, but only skirted these on the west, got on very busy I10 to Palm Desert, an upscale busy place with an upscale busy Walmart and a pleasant parking lot. As always, I was glad to get off the interstate. I ate a McDonald’s Big Mac, read awhile and slept under palo verde and palm trees, although I moved once as the two small RVs near me were a bit suspect. 

Palo verde tree - Walmart parking lot - Palm Desert, CA